Men copping the brunt of Qld job losses

Sobering statistics reveal why men are copping the brunt of the losses in Queensland’s job shedding.

Queensland, we need to talk about our man problem.

You see, when our Premier and her Treasurer chant on about all the “jobs, jobs, jobs” being created and paint a rosy picture about the state’s recovery as we’re emerging from the COVID-19 recession, they’re not telling you the full story.

Buried in the official unemployment figures is a serious issue for our state’s blokes: Male-dominated industries such as manufacturing and construction have led a full-time job shed of 40,000 jobs in the last year.

And that’s only half the drama.

For the fellas who rely on these jobs, the mounting losses of full-time positions requiring advanced skill sets have been offset by low-skilled, insecure and poorly paid casual roles which plump up monthly labour force reports and camouflage the problem.

Full-time job losses for men across 19 industries within Queensland totalled 26,300 for the 12 months to February, more than double that of females, who over the same period lost 10,200 full-time positions.

Job losses for women in full-time work have largely been driven by a reduction of roles in administration and accommodation services whereas for the state’s men, jobs in the construction sector fell by 17,700.

The Queensland experience for many jobseekers is one where those who want to work more hours are simply unable to – a trend the boffins call “labour market slack”.

Long-time observers of the state economy will note that the level of labour market slack built up in the last decade only compounds the challenge confronting federal, state and local politicians.

The COVID pandemic may be partly to blame, but the loss of full-time roles for men in traditional industries was a pain point for the economy before 2020.

Supporting the jobs market over the last decade, and more so during the COVID pandemic, has fallen to the public sector which has seen a surge in hiring at levels of government, most notably in health and public administration.

However government as a percentage of the total workforce is just over 20 per cent and it is the business sector both small and large that have not been able to create enough jobs to meaningfully bring down the state’s jobless rate below 6 per cent.

Slogans of “unleashing the power of small business” and “getting ready for the jobs of the future” tend to be offered up as solutions.

However such statements while big on rhetoric, fail to address the complexity of the challenge.

Small business employs less people as a proportion of the workforce than a decade ago, and the “jobs of the future” tagline is somewhat difficult to define when technology roles have also moderated in the last 10 years.

The Department of State Development website provides an impressive list of initiatives around advanced manufacturing, biomedical and aerospace as some of the industries the government supports as evidence of a path ahead.

The truth is that the jobs of the future require billions of dollars of investment and decades of support before realising any meaningful investment return and will such industries employ hundreds of thousand people?

Simply put it is time to address today’s problem, pick up the slack and get blokes back into business.

Dan Petrie is chief information officer of data analytics firm, Grafa and a former Economic Data Editor at Bloomberg LP who also goes by the name of Data Dan – do you have a data question? Email [e-mail]